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Success Doesn’t Require Role Models
The more you look to others, the less likely you are to find out what you are capable of.
There’s this joke I’ve heard from the startup scene in China. If you hang around the cafes in Zhongguancun — Beijing’s startup hub — often enough, you’ll inevitably hear a founder at the next table quoting Jack Ma, trying to impress a would-be investor or partner with his hunger for success.
Many people forget that Jack Ma didn’t grow up wanting to be an entrepreneur. In reality, he was rejected from many jobs and also struggled to do well as an English teacher before deciding to go into business. Even then, he revealed at a speech in China that he only led his founding team out of their previous company to start Alibaba on their own because he disagreed with his boss. If you read his life story, you would realize he faced so much doubt and rejections throughout his life that his motivation for success was probably to prove everyone wrong.
Ma applied for 30 different jobs and got rejected by all. “I went for a job with the police; they said, ‘you’re no good’”, Ma told interviewer Charlie Rose. “I even went to KFC when it came to my city. Twenty-four…
